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Review 1 of 1
Price Paid:
$7200.00
from Home Appliance Summary:
This set has a great picture and a good looking design. I hung it over my fireplace and it is the centerpiece of the room. Remote control is fairly easy to use, but I currently programming the Phillips 7000 remote to eliminate the numerous remotes needed to control my home theater system.
This set should have had additional controls over how the screen expands to the 16:9 mode. I had a 10 year old 16:9 set that gave 4 levels of enlargement of the 16:9 picture to accomodate DVD that either do not fill the screen. This set has 2 and I sometimes find the standard 16:9 mode does not fill up the screen (which can cause burn in on a plasma screen)and the expanded mode cuts off the tops and the bottom so it there is subtiles, you can't read them.
Picture is subperb -- bright, vivid, and can be seen at any angle. HDTV comes in great, but regular TV sometimes looks a big grainy on the large screen. Also, as with any plasma screen, you must force a 4:3 standard picture to 16:9 mode to prevent screen burn in. Sticker right on the face of the screen warned no to play anything in the 4:3 more more than 15% of the time to prevent screen burn in. Likewise, of VCR tape must be forced into the 16:9 mode which really makes a VHS tape look grainy. DVDs play great, as does any show in HDTV. Hopefully there will be more stuff in HDTV soon.
This set comes with a separate video control box that all wires connect to. From this box is one computer cable that connects to the TV. This eliminates the need for a jungle of wires to the TV and is one of the main reasons I bought this set. I was able to route the optional long cable ($200 options for the 35' cable)through the wall so there are no visible wires to my set which hangs over my fireplace.
Hitachi customer service is terrible. My set came with a defective video control box. You had to unplug the box after each use to reset it -- otherwise you could not turn the TV on again. Their authorized service center sent a guy down who quickly diagnosed the problem as a devective video control box. They didn't believe their authorized service center and made the repair guy take the box to the store where I bought it and swap it with the store box to confirm it was really the problem. Then, they wanted the box sent back before they would send a new box. Since I was able to use the set with this box by unplugging it, I refused and got the store involved. Hitachi would not let the store replace the set with a new working one. It took well over a month the get the new box which was backordered. After the box was switch, several customer service people called to see how things were, followed up by a non english speaking person to conduct a survey. The survey was stupid, I told the person my set was broken and I was dissatisfied, I thing she said there was no box for this answer so I needed to choose another answer. I asked her to get someone how could speak english. Eventually, I hung up on this jerk. Strengths:
Great picture, easy to hide wiring with the Hatachi separage video control box and a single cable. Weaknesses:
Set came broken out of box, Hatachi would not allow replacement with a new set, took a month and a half to get a new control box which was endlessly on backorder. Customer service could care less that this set cost about $8,000 and did not work.
Needs more control over the size of the 16:9 picture.
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